


The Lonely Ones

by 221b_hound



Series: Blood Brothers [18]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Epic Bromance, Gen, Psychic Sally Donovan, Vampire John, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 18:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11995440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: John and Sherlock are called in to investigate the disappearance of a woman and her daughter from a flat where everything but the bathroom is in tatters. John's vampire abilities make it clear this is no ordinary disappearance. Aided by John and Sally Donovan with her psychic gifts, Sherlock aims to solve the case before any actual harm is done.





	The Lonely Ones

**Author's Note:**

> After nearly two years - a new Blood Brothers story!

The Met only knew the bathroom was the primary crime scene because, unlike the rest of the apartment, it was spotless. Every surface gleamed by the light of the bare bulb and stank of bleach.

The rest of the house was a wreck. Furniture overturned, barely a stick of it intact. Contents of cupboards strewn across the living room floor, the kitchen, the bedrooms. The neighbours had reported a brief period of screaming and the smashing of things. Crying. Then deathly silence.

Lestrade and his team picked among the ruins. No bodies. No blood. Given the violence of the destruction, that was a surprise. Surely whoever had destroyed the place might have cut themselves at some point, let alone injured someone else.

When they got desperate to understand anything at all about the devastation and the lack of residents, they called in the consulting detective and his blogger.

“This is the home of Clarice Robinson and her daughter May, both missing,” explained Lestrade when Sherlock and John arrived at the apartments near 10pm. “The neighbours saw a man at Clarice’s door this afternoon, but the women didn’t let him in. They were fighting about a dog, apparently. The man was identified as Toby Dunstable, 30, after a constable on the beat intervened. Dunstable left without further incident. A few hours later, all hell broke loose apparently. Neighbours knocked, nobody answered, so we were called. This is what we found.”

Lestrade led them through the small flat. “Quite a struggle, as you can see, but weirdly, there’s no sign of blood anywhere. Only the bathroom’s been cleaned up, so there’s no blood there either. It’s hard to say what happened except there’s been a colossal brawl.”

Sergeant Donovan stepped aside to allow Sherlock room to stand on the bathroom’s threshold. John, standing behind him, shied from the smell.

“Yeah, it’s a bit much, isn’t it? Makes my eyes water.” Lestrade’s eyes were indeed red-rimmed.

John, whose eyes no longer watered - as a side effect of being undead - grimaced wryly and nodded. His supernaturally heightened senses had been recoiling  since he’d begun the walk to the front door.

“How tall are Ms Robinson and her daughter?” Sherlock asked.

“Mum’s shorter, about five-six,” – John arched and eyebrow at Lestrade from exactly that height – “May’s got a few inches on her, about five-ten or eleven.”

“How old?”

“May’s 14, Mum’s 30.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock reached into the air, fingers waving, testing something about the relative heights, then crouched down, hands on thighs, to examine the floor.

“Which of them is left-handed?”

“Clarice.”

Sherlock rose again, took a single step into the bathroom and turned a slow circle. “Close the door. John and I need a minute here.”

Lestrade sighed, well used to these platonic lifemates making odd requests. Sally raised a questioning eyebrow at them.

“Something in John’s area of expertise, then?” she asked quietly. She knew what John was, besides being a doctor.

“We won’t know until you shut the door,” Sherlock murmured crossly back.

John stepped into the room and waited until Sally had closed the door behind him before he spoke.

"Well?"

“Can you smell any blood at all?” Sherlock asked.

“I think the inside of my whole head has been bleached.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

John’s mouth tilted wryly. “Yes I can smell blood. Very faintly.” He pointed to the corner where the bathtub met the wall, to the right of the loo. A vein of pinkish red threaded in the white grouting between tiles at the join, where it was hard to reach for cleaning. Instead of looking more closely, Sherlock stood with his back to the door to allow John room to inspect the stain.

John had to partly balance on the loo seat, one hand on the wall the other steadied against the rim of the tub so that he could get his face close to the marks. He inhaled, winced, then flickered his tongue over it. He sucked on the tip of his tongue, grimacing.

“That blood’s not entirely human. Not surprising. The whole apartment smells of werewolf.”

“How fresh is it?”

“Within the last few hours. But the werewolf’s been here for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Sherlock, the scent’s everywhere. In the furniture, in the kitchen, the bedrooms, the front door, even the lift well. A werewolf’s been living here for years, and this is the first incident they’ve had.”

“The full moon’s not due until tomorrow night. Any idea what might have caused this? Oh, that's right. ‘I didn’t come with a manual to the fucking supernatural, Sherlock!’.”

“I don’t sound like that,” John laughed, knowing full well that he did.

Sherlock had already stepped onto the loo seat himself to inspect the window above it. The window was ajar; the ledge showed signs of usually having a small pot plant of some kind on it, but it had vanished.  “Scratches,” Sherlock pointed out, “Scuff marks. Whoever cleaned up in here got out this way.” He peered out at the ground below. "Not a huge drop as these things go."

“Why take the window instead of the own front door?”

“Avoiding observation.  Come on.”

All Sherlock would tell Lestrade as they left was that two people had cleaned the bathroom. The taller, right-handed one had been able to reach the higher portions of the walls, but not so far as the ceiling (this much was obvious from the direction of the cleaning strokes and the top row of tiles). The left-handed person had cleaned more thoroughly round the left-hand side of the toilet bowl than the right, where a faint trace of blood could be found in the grouting.

One of the neighbours was talking to Sally Donovan. Sally raised an inquiring eyebrow at them again.

“Mr Grisham is the neighbour who reported the argument about the dog with Dunstable.”

“Can you remember what they said?” Sherlock asked.

“Mad bugger kept barking at them.”

“Pardon?”

“You know. ‘Woof, woof’. He kept saying that. ‘She’s woof, Clarrie, woof. Gotta cage her.”

“Woof. That’s what you heard. Really?”

John leaned in, wearing his doctor smile. “You might look at getting a hearing test, Mr Grisham,” he said, then tugged Sherlock away by the elbow.

Sally asked her witness to wait a moment and followed them.

“I haven’t had any dreams about this,” she said.

“A good sign, surely,” said Sherlock.

“Are we really talking about a werewolf?”

“We are.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t think she’s dangerous,” said John quietly.

“It’s a _werewolf_.”

“I’m a vampire. Your point being?”

Sally sighed. “Nothing. So what now?”

“I need to speak to Dunstable.”

“What about the Robinsons?”

“Perfectly safe for the time being, I believe.  Do you have Dunstable’s address?”

“I’ll take you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

John sighed. “Squabble about it in the car on the way,” he said, “We need to talk to him before the full moon.”

*

Toby Dunstable wasn’t home, but that didn’t stop John from a little casual Breaking and Entering. Sally Donovan bit down on her police instincts and kept an eye out for witnesses while John climbed easily up the outside of Dunstable’s house and pushed open an upstairs window. Sherlock, she noticed, simply watched his friend do his creepy nightcrawler thing with an affectionate smile.

When John opened the front door to them both, they dodged in swiftly and shut the door behind them.

“There’s a cage in the bedroom,” John reported, leading the way, “Pretty banged up, deep scratches in the metal, but intact. Looks like he keeps himself out of harm’s way during the full moon.”

They found the second cage in what was normally a study. Most of the room's contents had been stacked up around the walls to make room for the new cage in the centre of the room. It was pristine – undented, unscratched. Unscented, too, according to John. Never been used.

John and Sherlock searched the rest of the house. The fridge was full of raw meat, kilos of it – beef, lamb, chicken, rabbit.

“He’s well prepared,” John said.

They joined Sally in the bedroom, and found her sitting in the middle of the cage, eyes closed, hand stretched out to touch the bars.

She cracked an eye open to look at them, then shut it again.

“I’m trying something new.”

“Visions while waking?” Sherlock asked.

“Seems to be a thing. Since the rooftop with Moriarty. Some days.”

“Today?”

She sighed and rose. “Maybe. There’s water. Either side and below. And… it’s like a cage. Or a roof. ”

“Which one?”

“I guess I’ll know when I see it.”

“That’s not very precise.”

“Sherlock, you can criticise my visions when you start having your own and have to work out what the hell they mean.”

Sherlock blinked. “Fair point. I’ll drive. You focus on finding your cage-or-roof”

*

Two a.m. came and went before Sherlock drew Sally’s car to a halt on Grosvenor Road. Ahead was Chelsea Bridge. He nodded at the Victoria Railway Bridge downstream, with its ten steel tracks spanning the river on four white arches. “Would that count as a cage or roof, vision-wise?”

But she was already getting out of the car on Grosvenor road and climbing over the fence to get down to the riverbank.

Moored on the upriver side of the bridge were four barges. A fifth and smaller barge, linked to the fourth barge by rope, had drifted downstream and now bobbed in the deeper darkness below the rail bridge, rope stretched taut.

Sherlock and John joined her on the embankment, but it was John’s superior eyesight that caught the movement just before a figure detached from the shadows on the barge decks and began crawling down the taut line of the rope towards the smaller boat.

“Think you can manage?” Sherlock asked John.

John flexed his hands, bent his knees. “Back in a minute.”

John backed up a few steps on the shore, then ran and launched himself across the water to the nearest boat. He landed with a hardly a sound, rose on his toes and ran towards the man making his way to the small boat.

“Do you ever get used to that?” Sally asked Sherlock, whose face in the streetlights was all affectionate grin again.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?”

“Weird,” she said.

“They’re not mutually exclusive,” Sherlock conceded.

The shadowed figure's shout of alarm drew the attention of the occupants of the little boat under the bridge. A splash soon after brought Clarice and May Robinson to the side of their boat, looking anxiously into the Thames.

John bobbed up, a man locked under one arm as he side-stroked to shore.

“Why am I always the one getting soaked?” he complained mildly, river water squelching out of his shoes as he hauled his catch onto the banks.

Toby Dunstable was unable to wriggle much in John’s vampire-strong grip, but he turned his head anyway to shout over his shoulder, “Clarry! I’m only trying to help! She’ll hurt someone!”

“It’s your fault, you tosser!” Clarry yelled back. “You did this to her!”

“I didn’t!” he called back, frantic, before changing that to, “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t _know_!”

“Come ashore Ms Robinson,” Sally called across the river.

“No!”

John sighed. “I’ll bring the boat in, will I?”

“Might be best,” agreed Sherlock, “And anyway, you’re already wet.”

John swam back to the boats, scrambled up the side of the barge to which the smaller boat was attached. He unwound the anchoring rope, leapt back in the water and towed the small boat back to shore.

“We’re not going to hurt you!” Sally shouted to the protesting mother and daughter.

“Leave us alone! You don’t understand!”

“Your daughter is a werewolf,” Sherlock said back, not shouting, but his voice pitched to carry, “This is her first full moon. You’re trying to keep her safe. We understand.”

“The bastard bit her!” Clarry yelled back, furious, as John reeled the boat in.

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t!”

“Liar! She’s changing! A night before the full moon even!”

“I never bit her! She’s my daughter! I wouldn’t ever do that! I never hurt you, did I?”

“You left me pregnant at 16, you bastard!”

“We were both 16 and _I didn’t know_!”

“What? That you were a fucking monster?!”

“How was I supposed to know what had happened to me? I was a fucking kid! And I had no idea May would end up like me. None. I swear, Clarry, I swear it! Please! I’m only trying to help!”

“I hate you!” screamed May suddenly, “Both of you. _Fuck my life_!”

“God,” muttered Sally, “What I wouldn’t give for a family services officer right now.”

*

John had to sit, soggy, with the equally soggy Toby, in the back seat, next to the scowling Clarice and May while Sherlock sat in the front and Sally drove them back to Baker Street.  John may not have come with a manual to the supernatural, but Sherlock had managed to learn a lot (and pinch a bit more) from Mycroft’s work on the Baskerville project.

“Toby didn’t bite your daughter,” Sherlock told Clarice, “She’s a natural born werewolf.”

“I didn’t know it was possible,” said Toby miserably, dressed in some of John’s clothes – too short in the legs and arms but dry and warm. May clearly had inherited her height from him, as well as her werewolf genes.

“The research indicates it’s uncommon,” Sherlock said with authority, “And happens primarily when fertilisation occurs within a day of the full moon.”

Toby buried his head in his hands. “I was just a kid. I’d just been bitten by a dog on the heath and it had cleared right up. It was weird. I was scared.”

“So you went to see your girlfriend.”

“I always went to Clarry when I was messed up. She always made everything all right.”

“Then you buggered right off and left me with a baby!”

“The next month I turned into a wolf,” Toby protested, eyes still full of fear, “I went from just scared to absolutely terrified. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

The story tumbled out. Realising what he’d become after the first night of transformation, Toby Dunstable, at the age of 16, had told his parents what had happened. They thought him mad until the second night of the full moon when they saw the change for themselves. They locked their son in the garage for the night. The next day, his father built a cage for him, ready for the following month. They’d learned that Toby's girlfriend was pregnant, and decided, as a family, it was safest for Clarice if Toby was not in her life. As soon as it was known that Clarry had safely given birth to an apparently normal, healthy daughter, they moved away.

And kept on moving. Fourteen years of trying to find out how to fix Toby or, failing that, to keep everyone safe, had followed. Fourteen years of Toby spending every full moon in a cage. Their family was a tight unit of three, trying to survive without hurting anyone.

Two years ago, Toby’s mother had died of a heart attack. Six months ago, his father had succumbed to cancer. Lost and alone, Toby had returned to the old family home – and felt the familial pull to see his daughter. Whom he thought he’d kept safe from the sleeping monster in his blood.

And now, at fourteen, her body surging with the hormones of puberty, May Robinson was experiencing her first transformation – a day ahead of the full moon.

“Strong emotion can trigger a change in natural born werewolves when the full moon is close,” Sherlock told them, more an extrapolation from the notes he’d read than an actual official conclusion. Well, she'd done it, hadn't she? A perfectly reasonable deduction from the evidence.

“Toby told me a month ago he was a werewolf. I didn’t believe him,” said Clarice, “So he asked me to come watch what happened during the full moon. He stayed in this cage. I thought he was crazy. Then… then…” She closed her eyes. “I saw it. And I thought _I_ was.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Toby.

May, who had been mostly silent until now, reached tentatively for his hand. Touched it. “You’re my dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you come yesterday? Why did you want to put me in a cage with you?”

“Not _with_ me. Your _own_. I came to meet you after the full moon when your mum saw me changed and… you remember, you said you’d had nightmares that night? You’d torn your sheets to shreds. You hadn’t made a full change, but I knew the signs. The week before my first change, it was awful. I tore and broke everything in my room. I didn’t want you to be alone like I was that first time. I didn’t know why you were changing too early, but I knew you must be.”

“I was so upset Mum wouldn’t let me talk to you,” said May softly, “And next thing I knew I was… all hairy and… and…”

“Her eyes changed colour. Her teeth... and her hands... She destroyed the house.” Clarry took her daughter’s hand. “I know you didn’t mean to sweetie. It’s not your fault. I managed to get her into the bathroom and hold it shut. As soon as she was quiet again I looked in and there she was, curled up in the bathtub. Crying. Bleeding. She’d cut her arms with those awful nails…”

“Mum explained about you being a werewolf. Didn’t have much choice except to believe.”

Knowing the full moon was coming, and would bring greater danger, Clarice and May had cleaned the bathroom of werewolf blood – “We didn’t know if the blood was dangerous. We thought it best to make sure it couldn’t hurt anyone” – and crept out by the window so that Toby wouldn’t see them leave by the front door.

Clarice had taken her daughter to the barges she knew from her work at a café near Lister Hospital to work out what to do next.

“I don’t know how you found us,” Clarice said to Toby.

“I followed your scent,” Toby admitted, shame-faced.

“You should have been here all along,” asserted May, “You should have been my dad.”

“I know,” he agreed miserably, “I was trying to be one. A good dad. I was trying to keep you safe. I didn’t know I’d already made a mess of it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t cry.” May shifted awkwardly, then she patted his face, wiping his tears away with her fingertips. “You didn’t know.”

“I know I scared you Clarry. I’m sorry. I’m just… I don’t know what to do. I only want to help.”

“Tobe.” Clarice was crying too. “Tobe. God.”

“You know,” said John suddenly into the atmosphere strained with grief and fear, “When I woke up a vampire, there was nobody to help. All I had was thirst and fear.”

Clarice, Toby, May, all looked at him, wide-eyed. Sherlock’s expression was softer. Sadder. Sally’s too. She’d witnessed Mycroft’s transformation from man to vampire on that rooftop, and what it had done to John to help him. She knew some of what John had suffered.

“Even when I had more control later it was… lonely doesn’t begin to cover it. When you’re afraid of yourself, when you’re afraid of who you’ll hurt if you lose control. There is nothing in the world as lonely as that.”

Toby was nodded. May held her father’s hand tightly.

“It got better when Sherlock found out what I was. When he wanted to help. When I _let_ him help me. I’m still frightened of myself sometimes. But I know that he’ll help to protect people from me. He’ll protect me from myself, when I need it. It helps to have someone who knows. Someone you trust. With everything.”

“Are you still lonely?” May asked in a whisper.

“Not any more.” John smiled at her, his glance travelling to Sherlock and back.

“Are you scared of him?” May asked Sherlock.

“No,” Sherlock said unequivocally, “We’ve worked together to understand his condition. I trust him. With my life. With my … I don’t know that I believe in souls. But whatever essence there is of me beyond flesh and blood, I trust John with that. With my heart, I suppose you’d say.”

May turned to her mother. “He’s my dad. And he knows what’s happening to me. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Mum. Please. Let him help me.”

Clarice stared at her daughter’s hand in Toby’s.

“Do you promise to take care of her? Of us?”

“Yes. Yes. Please. Clarry. I can’t undo it. But I can help keep her and you safe.”

Clarice nodded. “All right.”

“In the meantime,” said Sherlock briskly, brushing off his recent confessions, “You know about wolfsbane?”

“Wolfsbane, hawthorn, foxglove,” said Toby. “I can make them into a tea to help control the symptoms,” he explained to Clarice and May.

Sherlock rose and rummaged in a drawer, bringing back a plastic bag full of dried leaves. “In case you haven’t enough wolfsbane for the night,” he said.

*

No actual crime had been committed at the Robinson house, so the incident was marked as a spectacular teenaged tantrum when Sally confirmed that Clarice and May Robinson were both fine and that Toby Dunstable hadn’t caused any harm.

She’d left the three of them at Dunstable’s house, with her number and instructions to call her, Sherlock or John if they needed help. Best to keep Mycroft out of it for now, they’d agreed. Mycroft Holmes was a vampire now but that didn’t make him any more sympathetic a listener to his fellow creatures of the night.

Sally dropped into Baker Street again in the early afternoon.

“I checked the cages at Dunstable’s place,” she informed them. “They’ll hold for the full moon this month.”

Sherlock, busy making some kind of potion with holly berries, only nodded abstractly.

“I’ll pop by when the moon rises,” said John, “Keep an eye on them.”

“Thanks.” Sally put her hands in her pockets, thinking about her next words.

“Ah…” she began, then cleared her throat and tried again. “What you told the Robinsons. About. About… loneliness and. And letting people help. I wanted. To thank you.”

“For?” Sherlock asked, still working.

“About the visions. About seeing what I see. I’m not lonely these days and I’m hardly ever scared any more. So. Ah. Thank you. For. That.”

Sherlock raised his head properly to look at her. “Oh. Well. You’re welcome.”

John smiled. “Thank you, too.” 

She could see the tip of his fangs, and they didn’t alarm her any more.

“We freaks have to stick together,” she said.

Sherlock raised a test tube in a kind of toast. John laughed at him.

Sally, smiling too, left them to it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> It was so much fun to revisit this series again!


End file.
